Blindsided
by nescione
Summary: Posttimeskip AU. Three years after Sasuke leaves, Tsunade receives a strange message from the Sound the futures of Leaf, Sand, and Sound will changed by her decision. Eventual NaruGaa, NaruGaaSasu.
1. Default Chapter

Takes place three years after the timeskip and diverges in a couple of places; Gaara is not Kazekage, Temari is not hanging around with coughsexingupcough Shikamaru, Neji is still a genin, and the Akatsuki haven't started hunting down demon vessels yet.

Apologies in advance for the grammar breakdown in the Gaara scene; this fic is just one bizarre experiment for me. Warnings for abuse of language, both English and Japanese, general potty-mouthedness, eventual yaoi involving as many combinations of the syllables Naru, Sasu, and Gaa that you can think of, and excessive gore. (I have this thing about eyeballs...) Nothing is mine, and there are notes on the language at the end of the chapter. No sex for a while yet; hopefully by the time it comes up in the story, I'll have gotten over my aversion to writing lemons.

**Blindsided: Chapter 1**

_In which Naruto is a brat, Gaara is more Zen than thou, and Tsunade plays cards._

Naruto relaxed into the steaming waters of the hot spring with a sigh. He'd grown to appreciate Jiraiya's love of hot springs over the years, even if they both enjoyed them for completely different reasons. He could hear Jiraiya behind him, indulging in his own form of hot spring appreciation by the fence. "Hey, old pervert!"

"Quiet, I'm researching!"

Naruto snorted softly, stretching out sore and aching muscles. They'd been training hard lately, and now Jiraiya wanted to take a break to get "research" done. He was glad for the break, but he sometimes wished his teacher were a little less predictable.

"I'm supposed to be training, pervert. And you're supposed to be training me, not peeping into the women's bath," Naruto reminded his teacher. He glanced back at the old man, who was glaring at him.

"Fine, you want training? Here's your assignment: infiltrate the women's bath and bring back proof- visual proof." Naruto had turned around again, but he could _feel_ Jiraiya's leer.

"Are you _always_ thinking about sex, or is it only when I'm trying to ask a question?" He closed his eyes and leaned back in the hot spring, listening as his teacher settled into the water nearby.

"Heh. I don't know what you're talking about. A good shinobi always avoids the vices of drinking, gambling, and women."

"No wonder you suck, old man."

Jiraiya opened his mouth for an outraged retort, but thought better of it. He smirked, instead. "You worry me sometimes, brat."

Naruto opened his eyes lazily. "Huh?"

"Sometimes I wonder if you're not a little..." Jiraiya waggled his fingers, grinning. "You know."

"What!" Naruto flailed in Jiraiya's general direction, splashing water everywhere. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean!"

"You're sixteen, but all you care about is training, ramen, and being annoying. Not natural, if you ask me. Never _once_ have you expressed even the slightest interest in helping me with my research. Before, I thought it was just because you were too young, but now that's no excuse. I thought Kakashi and I taught you better. Why, when I was your age-"

"Just because I'm not some sort of super pervert who chases after everything with breasts doesn't mean I'm...!" Naruto made an incoherent noise and glared at Jiraiya, who was laughing uncontrollably now. "Shut up, asshole," he grumbled. "Just 'cuz I've got other things to think about...it's not like it matters, anyway, and how would you know?"

Jiraiya thunked him on the head with a fist, still chuckling. "Thought you could take a joke better than that, kid."

"Yeah, well, if you're jokes weren't so fuckin' lame...!" Naruto slumped a little lower in the water and glowered. Jiraiya shook his head and grinned.

He pointedly ignored Jiraiya and blew bubbles thoughtfully. The old man's teasing didn't really bother him; he knew he liked girls just fine, and if he occasionally found himself liking boys on a similar level, well, it wasn't any of Jiraiya's business, was it? Naruto considered it a point of personal pride that he'd managed to conceal his personal collection of dirty magazines from his teacher for so long. It was a stealth exercise, one he'd gotten very good at through months of practice and intensive training.

Thinking of training, though...he remembered what he'd originally wanted to ask. "Jiraiya?"

"What now, brat?" Jiraiya had lit a pipe at some point and was blowing smoke rings into the sky.

"When are we going home? I mean, it's been _ages_ since I've had a decent bowl of ramen. There was that one place in Earth Country that was pretty good, and that little stand in Water Country that did that really great thing with the fried noodles, but Ichiraku is still the best, especially when Iruka-sensei is paying, and if I have to go much longer without good ramen, I might shrivel up and die from deprivation, so we really ought to start heading back, don't you think?" Naruto tilted his head back to watch the path of Jiraiya's smoke rings as he spoke. "Right? Jiraiya?"

Jiraiya took a long, slow drag off his pipe, eyebrows creasing slightly. He blew the smoke out the side of his mouth with a sigh. "Look. When he was your age, Yondaime had created no less than four completely original jutsu. One of them was the rasengan, and two of the others are now requirements for Anbu members. All you've done is find new and perverted ways to use kage bunshin. When you've developed an original technique that's worth using, we can go home."

Naruto bristled at the implied insult to his Sexy no Jutsu, but he knew Jiraiya was right. Still, no worries. He vaulted out of the pool and gathered up his things. "That's all?" He squinted up at the setting sun. "Better pack your bags tonight, old man, 'cuz we're going home tomorrow!"

Jiraiya watched his student leave, silhouetted by the setting sun, and chuckled softly to himself.

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The rising moon sat on the horizon like a fat, lazy cat, its stark light coloring the desert in harsh blues and blacks. Below it, three figures crept across the sand; two of them left bloody footprints as they went. One of them left no footprints at all.

The three ninja struggled over the dunes (two of them struggled; the third slid over the sand like the wind); Temari bit back another curse as she stumbled again, feeling a sickening lurch in her stomach as Kankurou's weight slid against her shoulder. The last time she'd tripped, he'd made a noise. It had been a horrible, wet, bloody noise, but at least it had been _something_. She couldn't tell if he was even _alive_ anymore; enough of the slick wetness between them was her own blood that she couldn't rely on its warmth to say whether or not her brother had died on her. Kankurou might as well have been one of his own puppets, slung over Temari's shoulder with his strings cut. Temari resisted the sudden urge to vomit at the thought.

The mission hadn't gone well.

Technically, it was a success; the vultures would eat well for _weeks_, and Suna's trade caravans would no longer be bothered by that particular clan of dessert raiders. The goal had been to maximize the body count to discourage further raids; they'd done one better and wiped out the entire clan- or rather, Gaara had. She and Kankurou had mostly just stood on the sidelines until Gaara ran out of things to kill. That wasn't really out of the ordinary; they'd received plenty of wholesale slaughter missions as genin and chuunin. They were rarer now that the three of them were all jounin, but occasionally someone just needed a large number of people dead, with minimum hassle- and there wasn't anyone better at that than Gaara of the Sand.

Temari and Kankurou hadn't even needed to go; Gaara could have taken care of a bunch of non-shinobi, camel riding savages in his sleep- the catnaps he took to stay relatively sane, not the jutsu-induced sleep that usually resulted in massive property damage. But they _had_ been there, and now, successful mission or not, her brother was dying while her other brother-

Gaara had stopped moving; Temari slowly crested the dune they'd been climbing to stand beside him. The landscape before them was dotted with lopsided monoliths, and in the distance the faint twinkle of Suna's lamps could be seen, nestled in the craggy embrace of ruins older than the desert. Temari could have wept from relief, but she knew better than to waste water.

"Gaara?" Her voice was a broken whisper; blue-black bruises dappled her neck like a choker.

He raised a hand slowly, and looked at his sister. In the moonlight, his eyes were holes in his skull. "Home," he said simply.

Temari let her gaze drop to the blood that was slowly seeping down Kankurou's arm, onto her sandals. Gaara had been outside of himself since they'd been assigned the mission; the fact that he seemed aware of his surroundings now was either a good sign, or a precursor to him burying the entire village beneath a mountain of sand in a fit of- of whatever it was that gave Gaara fits. It was hard to say, sometimes.

"Temari?"

She looked up at him, and was struck by the sudden, absurd realization that she'd let both of her baby brothers get taller than her at some point. Bastards- never mind what that said about her own parentage, they were both bastards. And Gaara had always been such a cute little thing, too; she'd always thought his growth had been stunted by excessive evil and homicidal tendencies, but apparently she'd been wrong. Then again, he'd been doing so well lately, until the mission...

The sand was soft and fine grained against her skin; it wrapped around her in a supportive cocoon. "Temari? You're bleeding." Gaara sounded confused. "So is Kankurou."

The last thing Temari heard before everything went dark was the hissing of sand around her and a very frustrated, clearly articulated, "_Shit_." She let out a soft sigh and dropped off completely. Someone had taught her baby brother to curse. It sounded kind of cute.

\\\\\\\\\\

Gaara glared at the moon and cursed himself and the demon currently sharing space in his head once again. The full moon made Shukaku restless, hungry; he should have known better than to take a mission during this time of the month. (Kankurou joked about that, sometimes, when he knew Gaara wasn't feeling particularly homicidal.)

_Of course you should have known better._

_Shut up._ Gaara stared at the moon and felt the world tilt and shift into a different set of tenses; he clung to vaguely remembered theories and explanations like a lifeline in the jumbled mess that was his mind. _The concentration of demonic energy (_...of evil_, voices whisper) in so small a container had the unfortunate side effect (one of many) of distorting the host body's temporal perceptions..._

Gaara reads the world like a textbook, which will be scrawled across pages and pages of blank sand in blood. He is not always able to understand (present indicative infinitive, which was often so much like Shukaku, _present_ly _indicating_ the _infinite_ measure of his pain, suffering, because he always had to be dramatic, the bastard) the things that were being written- imperfect passive, much like himself when the demon howls (is howling, will be howling, _screams_) for blood.

_Your brother's blood tasted sweet_. Shukaku has always preferred the perfect tense, being vain and full of himself. _Your sister's, bitter. Good together, the two of them. I hungered._ Of course, the limits of the language that Gaara hears him in prevents accuracy in conveying the true essence of his meaning; Gaara prefers the present tense, for reasons the demon may never understand. Something has labeled the unsteady construction of walls and a roof behind him _home_ but he is not sure who or what or how and was never particularly sure on the "why" of anything. _Creating a codependency between human and demon (_participles were always confusing_) has always been likely to be responsible for a number of inconvenient symptoms of instability._ Will he be an inconvenience, then?

_Go back to sleep, old man. You've done your damage for tonight._ Gaara had not regretted his actions (pluperfect, as awkward as it ever sounded) but he was never in need of regret to feel anger. It had been unfortunate that anger and the demon do not translate well. The world and his memories are being shifted, sideways, translated, moving in a lateral direction. He could remember: words in neat vertical rows on a page, lying open on his father's desk. _Typical indications of instability are insomnia and disassociate behavior characterized by lack of emotional response. The subject may evince socio and psychopathic symptoms and should be put down at the soonest convenience._

His fingers were itching for a paintbrush. Shukaku will have been laughing the entire time. With his death, the demon was free; there will be no seals to keep him in place as life slips away. But that wasn't yet. Wouldn't be yet. Death does not come easy to demons, no matter how unstable they will be becoming.

What was now? Now was the moon, the bodies in their beds, bleeding beneath the hands of healers, the kunai in his hand, the kunai _through_ his hand, that jolted the demon back into the prison in Gaara's head, and jolted Gaara back to the proper tense.

Gaara tore his eyes away from the moon and stared at the wound on his hand. The cut was fairly shallow, but it bled freely. Physical pain was negligible to Gaara (nothing physical could compare to the pain of twelve years of hatred, betrayal, and isolation), but it always startled Shukaku. The sand never protected the demon; the automatic shielding reflex was his mother's doing, and wasn't related to his parasitic freeloader. It was the only way he could get away with bleeding; when Shukaku tried to take control, his perfect defense slipped, and the demon didn't know how to deal with self inflicted injuries. The last three years had taught him a great deal about bleeding.

He could hear the healer nins in his siblings' rooms, doing their best to ensure that Suna's "Legendary Three" didn't reduce to a Legendary One. Gaara ignored the sudden, stabbing pain in his chest and head and stepped off the porch, leaving a set of dark footprints on the wood. He was still covered in blood, having not bothered to clean himself off before summoning the healers. Temari would kill him for dirtying the floors when she woke up.

Temari didn't have the option of not waking up; she would have to wake up very soon so Gaara could tell her that. Kankurou, too; Gaara didn't want either of his siblings to think that their lives were their own to throw away as they pleased. The sand beside the house swirled around him, forming a shallow depression beneath his feet. He knelt and let the blood weep freely from his hand, turning the pale grains of sand beneath him dark and gleaming in the moonlight.

_Mother, a gift for you._ Temari and Kankurou had been so still, so pale. Gaara hunched over the now-bloody sand and let his tears mix with the blood. _A gift. A sacrifice._ Sand slid from the gourd on his back and curled around him, warm and protective. His mother's voice was much softer than Shukaku's; it was a wonder he'd had them confused for so many years. After his run-in with _that_ boy, though, he'd learned to distinguish them. Mother was soft and quiet and did not thirst for blood the way Shukaku did; she never asked for anything more than his love, which was much harder to give than blood, but he was learning.

For Gaara, blood and love were inextricably entwined, anyway. He gave his love the best he could; in blood and tears beneath the moon. _Mother, I bleed for you._ He could feel the energy welling up from the sand- if he had to describe it, he would have said it felt windswept and lonely, as opposed to Shukaku's power, which was just bloody.

From within his shell of sand, he could feel his siblings' chakra like points of light and warmth some distance away; they were faded and weak. As his blood soaked into the sand, the chakra points pulsed with steadily brightening light until they were self sustaining- not entirely whole, but no longer in danger of going out. The sand fell away, and Gaara looked up at the moon again. He flexed the fingers of his now healed and cleaned hand, and smiled.

Gaara of the Desert did not smile often. _Thank you, mother_. The healers were waiting for him when he returned to the house, somber in dark gray.

"Your sister and brother will recover completely, Gaara-sama." Their fear cast a faint, metallic scent over everything. Gaara nodded and walked past them; they could find the door perfectly well on their own. He stopped by the kitchen to fill a shallow bowl with water and went to see his siblings.

Kankurou first, because Kankurou would have died- he couldn't remember much, but he could remember _that_, the delicious sound of his brother's scream as an arm of sand crushed his ribcage. Kankurou was often prone to making strange noises for no reason at all, just as he was prone to painting his face and playing with dolls, but Gaara had never before heard him make that particular noise. Shukaku had enjoyed it too much; therefore, it would not happen again.

His brother's room was covered in pieces of puppets; limbs and bits of faces hung from the walls like ghoulish body parts. The other items of Kankurou's trade- the paints, stone and wood carving tools, bolts of multicolored fabric- were piled and stacked and tossed haphazardly across the floor and the tiny desk in the corner. The single, low bookshelf was full of drama scripts and cookbooks; Gaara had "borrowed" and read them all at one point or another. There was a small, ornate box on the bedside table that was filled with half-finished stone and wood carvings. Gaara knew this because he'd checked, and had felt surprisingly guilty afterwards.

Kankurou raised a hand slightly in greeting as Gaara slipped through the partially open door and stood by the bed. "Hey."

He could have been worse, Gaara decided. There was some sort of breathing apparatus strapped to his face, and the healers hadn't bothered to clean off all the blood- it clashed with the smudged remains of his face paint. He was as wrapped in bandages as his puppets, but he was awake now, and no longer bleeding. Not-bleeding was, he'd discovered, quite conducive living.

"Healers said I'd be down for a week. You'll have to feed yourself for a while." Kankurou grinned, the expression distorted beneath the tubes and thinly veiled pain. His voice was indistinct and his eyes cloudy; Gaara didn't want to think about the painkillers his brother had been injected with. (The sand did not take well to the presence of hypodermic needles, and drugs, no matter how tempting, were too dangerous to risk.)

"Brother." Gaara rolled the word around his mouth, finding its flavor unfamiliar. He didn't use it often, but this situation probably warranted it.

Kankurou smiled again, a real smile this time, and let his eyes close. "Aa. I'll be fine. Don't worry about it," he muttered. "Wasn't your fault."

"Even so, it won't happen again." Gaara kept his voice low as he knelt beside his brother's bed. He took a piece of cloth and wet it; slowly, carefully, he began wiping away the blood and paint from his brother's face.

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Gaara-kun." Kankurou's voice was fading as Gaara cleaned his face.

"I don't," he whispered fiercely, but Kankurou was already asleep. Gaara left the bowl of water beside the bed when he finished and shut the door behind him as he left.

Temari's room was nearly spartan; her walls were mostly bare, save for the collection of exquisitely crafted tessen she'd picked up in her travels. Kankurou sometimes hypothesized that she had girly things hidden somewhere, possibly in the back of her closet or under her bed, but Gaara had never dared to look. Temari looked too much like his mother.

Right now, though, she just looked pale, and there were bandages around her neck that disappeared beneath the collar of her nightshirt; he could dimly remember the tendril of sand that tried to strangle her. In a way, he was proud; his siblings were too strong and stubborn to let themselves be killed.

She smiled a tiny smile at him when he stepped through her door. Four years ago, the room would have reeked of fear, but now there was just a faint, bitter medicinal smell, commingling with the scent of blood.

"Alright now?" she asked.

He sat beside her on the edge of the bed and stared at his hands. "I think so. For now."

"That's good. I was a little worried- it looked like the end, you know?" Her lips quirked in her typical smirk. "All I could think was how cute you'd gotten."

"I," he enunciated very clearly, "am not _cute_."

"No, of course not," she agreed. "I was hallucinating. You were never cute, not even when you were little and shorter than everybody else, when you had those great big eyes and that little bear-"

"Temari-neesan, don't make me regret not killing you." He remembered not to smile when he said that, because he'd been told his smile was perhaps his most frightening quality.

"Sorry." She didn't look it.

He touched her face and marveled at the warmth of her; when she wrapped her fingers around his hand, he marveled that her warmth could spread so far so quickly. "So am I."

"It's okay." And somehow, it was. Her grip tightened for a moment, and then she let go, her hand falling back to the mattress. "You should report to Baki."

"I know." She didn't need to say that he shouldn't have lost control. That much was more than apparent to both of them. "In the morning."

"Good. You should also get some sleep."

He ducked his head and scowled. Temari had taken to the role of nagging older sister far too well. "Maybe later." He didn't want to sleep now, not when Shukaku was so close to the surface of his consciousness. If he listened, he could hear the demon laughing quietly. "You need rest more than I do."

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Whatever." She waved her hands to shoo him away. "Wake me when you go out in the morning."

"Aa." He half wanted to stay in her room, but he knew Temari would never allow it. He would just have to distract himself from the loneliness and the voices in his head some other way; clinging to his sister wasn't going to solve anything. "Goodnight, Temari-neesan."

"Goodnight, Gaara-kun."

If he were anyone else, he wouldn't have heard her whisper, "Thank you," as he closed the door, but his hearing was better than most. His sister's simple acceptance of everything he was eased some of the ever-present pain in his chest; he leaned against her door for a moment, savoring the feeling.

His own room was lined with paper; calligraphy scrolls and paintings, all worn to a matte finish by the ever present particles of sand in the air. There was no bed, only a series of low tables and seat cushions; when he slept, which was rarely, Gaara preferred to do it sitting up. He propped his gourd by the door and took a seat at one of the tables.

_More blood and sand tonight, little one?_ Shukaku's voice was a quiet whisper in the back of his mind.

Gaara glanced up at the older calligraphy scrolls and smirked. He'd come a long way from mindlessly scrawling the kanji for "blood" and "death" over and over again to distract himself from his own self-loathing. _Maybe._ He unrolled a blank scroll across the surface of the table and set out his brushes and ink stone. After a moment's consideration, he uncovered his paints as well. _Go to sleep, old man._

_Hmph. You should have let them die. You saw their fear, their hatred. You could smell their lies. Your sister looks pretty when she's pretending to care._ It was an old game between the two of them, to see who would lose patience first.

These days, Gaara usually won, despite the swirling miasma of violence and lust lurking in the corners of his mind. _The other day Temari said we needed a new teapot. I think I'll pick one up tomorrow._ A tiny smile fixed itself on Gaara's lips as Shukaku hissed in impotent rage. He was calm now, and the demon had no hope of gaining control.

He pushed all thoughts of Shukaku and the full moon away, concentrating on the feel of the brush between his fingers, and the texture of the paper beneath the brush. He let his mind go completely blank and let his hand move as it wished; through the window, the moon slid closer to the horizon, glowing with a soft light.

\\\\\\\\\

Tsunade squinted at the impending sunrise on the horizon and wiped a line of drool off her cheek. She hadn't meant to fall asleep at her desk again, but her mind was much clearer for the few hours of rest she'd grabbed. She unrolled the scroll on her desk once again and reread it for the seventh time; this time, her only course of action seemed clear.

"Sakura."

Her apprentice grumbled something in her sleep from the couch against the wall, then roused herself. "Yes, Tsunade-sama?"

The piles of scrolls and paperwork were shoved to the side, clearing a space on the desk. Tsunade brought out a pack of cards and smiled sheepishly at her yawning trainee. "Game of poker?"

The pink haired girl gave her teacher a look of flat disbelief, and yawned wide enough to crack her jaw. Tsunade could almost hear the wheels turning in her student's head, and they weren't making very complimentary noises. "I'll make some tea first, Hokage-sama." Her words were polite but her tone clearly implied that she would much rather be sleeping, or shoving splinters under Tsunade's fingernails.

Tsunade's smile turned grim; she'd done a good job as a teacher. She shuffled and cut the cards while Sakura made the tea, her hands firm and steady despite the troubled lines between her eyebrows. Her eyes settled on the calendar on her desk as she shuffled the cards again and again, mindlessly. _Three years...we're running out of time._

A teacup slammed onto the desk, jolting Tsunade out of her reverie. Sakura sat down, looking moderately more awake and slightly less violent as she nursed her own cup of tea. "Have you come up with a reply to those messengers yet?"

"Maybe." Tsunade took a sip of her own tea, pleased to recognize the taste of one of her own herbal stimulant brews. She would be needing the energy. "You shouldn't have slept on the couch, you know. You could have gone home." She offered the cards to Sakura

Sakura shook her head and cut the deck. "It's easier to just stay here- your office is closer to the hospital."

There was no point in commenting on how necessary it was to have as many healers as close to the hospital as possible these days; three years of war hadn't treated Konoha well. Tsunade dealt the cards quickly; Sakura looked at her hand and snorted. "If I win, you owe me a raise."

Tsunade hadn't looked at her cards yet. Her eyes strayed to the calendar again. _Definitely running out of time._ "Done. I probably owe you one anyway." She picked up her cards.

A sick feeling settled in the pit of her stomach as she turned them over. Four aces stared up at her, mocking.

"Tsunade-sama?"

She set her cards down, and willed her hands not to shake. "Send in the Anbu on duty, then call the emissaries from Sound. Tell them I have an answer."

Sakura leapt up without question and hastened to carry out her orders. Tsunade unrolled the message scroll one last time and began writing her reply. Outside, the sun had broken over the horizon, bathing the five faces on the mountain in pale golden light.

And that was chapter one, which shouldn't have been this long, and would've been even longer if I hadn't cut out a third of it.

I don't speak Japanese, so I have no excuse for screwing with it. However, I know plenty of people who do speak the language, so I've picked up just enough to be obnoxious with it. I know the verb tenses don't parallel English verb tenses, so Gaara's mental breakdown isn't really possible in Japanese. I'll apologize for that again- all I can say is, it made sense at the time. Just pretend he thinks in English and writes in kanji, and I promise it won't happen very often (if ever; this is all experimental) in the future. sheepish

I'll be abusing Japanese to make up new technique names, and I'll provide translations for them as they appear in the story. But aside from the techniques and the honorifics, I'll try to avoid using fangirl Japanese. I'll also tend to avoid making English plurals out of Japanese words, so every time you see ninja instead of ninjas, or shinobi instead of shinobis, it's intentional, because I am a snob with what little knowledge of the language I do have. XD

Anyway. Thanks for muddling through. Comments and criticism are greatly appreciated, particularly on characterization; the characters all make sense to _me_, but I'm a freak, so I'm curious as to how they translate to other people.


	2. Stuff Happens, Sort Of

Warnings as always for language (foul, fangirl, and otherwise). I had hoped to cut down on the length in this chapter, but it still took me so long to say so little...meh. Further notes and translations at the end. 

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**Blindsided Chapter 2**  
_In Which Naruto Shows Off, and Tsunade Practices the Ancient Art of Exposition_

"Oi, oi! Old man!" Naruto grinned down at Jiraiya from his perch in a tree. "You call this a fight? Granny down the street put up more of a challenge!"

"Brat!" Jiraiya grinned back as he slammed his fist into the tree trunk; Naruto was already gone, leaping away faster than the eye could follow. "What are you doing terrorizing little old ladies, anyway?"

He slid out of the way as Naruto came hurtling down with a heel drop that would have split a normal man's skull in two. His student sprang back up as soon as he hit the ground, chakra gathering in the palm of his hand. "I wasn't terrorizing her, _she_ was the one who came after _me_ with the cane!"

Jiraiya didn't really want to admit it, but Naruto had gotten good. Really good, in fact- but the frog sage still had half a head and at least fifty pounds on his student, in addition to nearly forty years of experience. He caught the hand Naruto wasn't using for the Rasengan and used plain brute force to shoulder the boy into the ground. Once he had Naruto's face in the dirt, he sat on his student, ruffling the unruly blond hair affectionately with his free hand. "Nice try, brat. You're getting good, but you'll never be good enough to defeat me, the Great Sage Jiraiya!"

"M'not gonna be beat by some stupid, perverted, _fat_ old man!" Naruto's free hand was scratching seals in the dirt with fingers that were rapidly morphing into claws. "_Kokonotsu Biyoku Kitsune Kasai_!"

The sudden blast of the kyuubi's chakra threw Jiraiya off Naruto's back. The blond stood and brought his hands together, forming a quick series of hand seals. The fiery chakra flowed around him like water, forming long pointed ears and six lashing tails. "Get ready, pervert-sennin! Uzumaki Naruto's number two original technique!"

"Number two? You idiot- what do you think you're doing?" Jiraiya tossed a few exploding notes at his student; the way the kyuubi's chakra absorbed them never failed to amaze him. He followed them with a rain of kunai, taking to the trees with a nimbleness that belied his age. "Are you gonna attack me, or what?"

Naruto formed the last seal, and all of the wildly lashing demon chakra disappeared. Jiraiya's eyes widened in shock when he realized that the excess chakra hadn't been absorbed- it had been focused into a long, thin ribbon that wrapped around Naruto's fist. It began spinning, faster and faster, until his hand was surrounded by a whirlwind of energy.

"Ninpou! _Tatsumaki_!"

The blast actually flung Jiraiya thirty feet into the air, and he wasn't standing anywhere near the epicenter of the attack. He cursed his own carelessness when he hit the ground; that was going to bruise. He staggered to his feet to survey the damage. "Alright. That was pretty good." Like most things Naruto did, it was a little over the top. Effective, but over the top. "New rule, though- no using new techniques on your teacher without telling him what they're going to do, first."

The clearing had tripled in size; Naruto had leveled the forest for a good half-mile on one side. The shockwave that followed the actual attack had ripped the leaves and branches off the trees that weren't felled; it had been that shockwave that had thrown Jiraiya. He'd been lucky to be on the very fringes of the attack- Jiraiya picked up a thick branch and stared at the slender, delicate twig embedded in it. Tornado, indeed.

Naruto was positively beaming, too excited by his teacher's vague approval to care about the destruction he'd caused. "D'you wanna see my other technique? It's a really good one!"

"Is it gonna knock down more of the forest?"

"Nope! It's genjutsu. Sort of. And it's not really _mine_, but I'm the only one who can do it, and I helped make it, so that still counts, right?" The kid was bouncing back and forth, still grinning. "Well? Well? You wanna see it, right?"

Genjutsu? Naruto had gotten better at it, but genjutsu was still his weakest skill. Jiraiya frowned. He might have been occasionally lax in his teaching duties, but he always kept a close eye on his student. For Naruto's best technique to be a genjutsu was more than a little alarming. This was something he should have known about. He dropped into a cross-legged sitting position and took out his pipe. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever." He lit the pipe and settled his elbows on his knees. "Go for it."

"Kage bunshin no jutsu!" Three Narutos grinned at Jiraiya. One of them began a long series of hand seals, while the other brought his hands together in a very familiar formation. "Henge!" The transformed clone dropped to the ground with a hollow noise. The third Naruto picked it up and stood behind the first- and probably original- Naruto.

Red chakra surrounded both of them; Naruto's eyes were slit-pupilled and blood red, and the whisker marks on his face had become bold dark stripes. He was going all-out, drawing on enough of the demon's chakra to change his body. Jiraiya sucked on his pipe and watched carefully.

"_Kitsunenomen_!" The clone disappeared in a puff of smoke and the thing it had been holding- a mask, Jiraiya realized, a pointy-eared, grinning fox mask- fell into place over Naruto's face.

_Genjutsu, just a genjutsu, only he said it was "sort of" a genjutsu. Stupid brat, of course he didn't pay enough attention in school to know you're not supposed to mix technique types. Now he's gonna knock down the rest of the forest, and I'm gonna have to pay for it..._ Jiraiya puffed on his pipe and glared as the forest melted around him. He could tell it was genjutsu; Naruto still sucked at illusion techniques.

"Kai!" He blinked. The forest was still melting. In fact, it had caught on fire, and Naruto was nowhere to be seen. Even his chakra signature was gone; Jiraiya was all alone in the clearing, surrounded by melting, burning trees and little floating squiggles of flame. Fox fire. He sighed. "Interesting effect, brat."

A different set of seals, this time, for a more powerful release technique. "Testu!" The forest slid back into its proper shape and stopped burning, but the floating spirals of fox fire remained, and there was still no sign of his student. Jiraiya knocked the ash out of his pipe and put it away. If Naruto wanted to play this way, fine. Jiraiya kept one eye on the fox-fire as he pulled out a blank scroll and a kunai. He'd forgotten more about genjutsu than Naruto would ever learn; no matter how impressive Naruto's technique was, he still wasn't any match for one of the sannin.

The little flames shivered, and Jiraiya rolled out of the way as a wall of force slammed into the ground where he'd been sitting.

"You're telegraphing your movements too much! Suiton: _Tsunami no jutsu_!" The wave of water Jiraiya summoned didn't extinguish the floating curls of flame; they looked a little sodden, but otherwise unharmed. Jiraiya wasted no time in slicing a finger open and unrolling the blank scroll. Demon or not, the kyuubi was still a fire spirit, and fire was just another element. It could be contained.

Tsunade was the greatest healer Konoha had ever produced, and Orochimaru could kill people with his brain, but of all the shinobi in Hidden Leaf, no one was more skilled with seals than Jiraiya the Toad Sage.

"_Fuukan no koumajutsu_!" He scrawled the kanji onto the paper with broad, sweeping strokes of his hand and threw the entire scroll into the center of the fox fire when it was finished. The paper unrolled and wrapped around the flames; Jiraiya could see grasping, shadowy hands in the folds and twists of it, clinging to the grinning licks of fire. When the last bit of it had been wrapped up, the whole thing fell to the mud with a heavy, wet sound; what had once been a scroll was now a ceramic fox mask, crawling with seals.

Jiraiya felt the chakra flare behind him as he was picking up the mask; he leapt out of the way just in time for another wave of force to chew up the ground where he'd been standing. It was unfortunate that he didn't have the luxury of using most of his attacks; Jiraiya preferred to fight on a much larger scale, and they just weren't isolated enough for him to risk that.

Naruto seemed to have forgotten for the time being, but he was willing to be that Naruto didn't remember much at the moment.

The creature staring at Jiraiya, surrounded by fire, was not his student. It wasn't even _human_. It walked on two legs, but it had six lashing tails and six broad black stripes along its muzzle and far, far too many teeth. Its chakra was a physical presence, strong enough to drive Jiraiya backwards, towards the edge of the clearing.

It was a sight the sennin saw in his nightmares, occasionally, only this one was smaller and had fewer tails. However, it would only be a matter of time before Naruto learned to fully utilize the power at his disposal; his maximum power had gone off the scale. Jiraiya thought of his first student, and felt something a little like despair settle in his chest.

"Naruto! Enough!" He pulled out another blank scroll, hoping it wouldn't be necessary. The fox creature cocked its head to the side, tongue lolling out over sharp, sharp teeth. There was mischief in its glowing red eyes, but not, Jiraiya was relieved to note, hostility.

Then again, he wasn't sure he wanted to deal with the _mischief_ of a six-tailed demon fox anymore than he would its malice. The demon dropped to four legs and whined low in its throat, tails drooping.

"Enough, Naruto." His student had proven his point. The longer he had to look at the reincarnation of that..._thing_, the more inclined he would be to forget that his student and the fox were separate entities and just seal the whole mess of them- fox, child, distorted chakra, and all- into a tree.

The fox whined again and slunk forward slowly, pausing in front of Jiraiya to nose at the mask in the sennin's hand. Jiraiya looked from the sealed mask to the giant fox, narrowed his eyes, and brought his fist down on the fox's head. It yelped. He felt a little better.

"Stupid brat." A few quick hand seals and the mask was just a mask, albeit a mask that practically glowed with stored chakra. "You can't go around putting that much of yourself into an imperfect jutsu. Do you know how easily I could kill you right now?"

If the fox had eyebrows, it would have been raising them. As it was, the animal's features somehow managed to convey complete and utter disbelief without the aid of eyebrows. Jiraiya thunked it on head one last time for good measure and held out the mask.

Strings of red chakra flowed between the fox and the mask, dissolving both a little around the edges, until there was just Naruto, sitting cross legged in the grass, holding a plain white mask. He stared at it thoughtfully.

"That was unexpected."

"Idiot. Take off your shirt, I need to check your seal." Jiraiya crossed his arms impatiently. "Can you even tell me what the hell you just did, or was it all instinctual?"

Naruto waved him off. "Hey, hey, old man, calm down. I only took down two seals, it's fine. I told you it was just a genjutsu, right? Kage bunshin starts it off, so I can divert enough chakra into the illusion, and then the rest of it goes into opening the first two seals and the henge."

"You weren't human- I'm not taking any risks. Take off your shirt, or I'll seal _you_ into a scroll."

The boy sighed and did as he was told. "The mask thing shouldn't have happened, though." His voice was muffled by his shirt as he pulled it over his head. "I didn't know you could do that with the seals."

Jiraiya pushed him flat on his back and examined the spiral around his navel. "There are thousands of sealing jutsu made specifically for sealing demon chakra. Those flames practically reeked of it."

Naruto finally had the sense to look a little worried. "They shouldn't have. The illusion was all in the first mask, and that was my chakra, not the fox's."

"It's starting to look like there isn't a difference." The seal was still intact, and the lines were still heavy and dark around Naruto's navel, but a few of the markings looked slightly altered. "You said that jutsu wasn't yours- who taught it to you?"

"Who do you think, pervert-sennin?" Naruto's head was turned to the side, eyes fixed on the torn up ground.

Jiraiya sat back on his heels and studied the spiral seal thoughtfully. "Yondaime did good work when he made this. Very good work. If I find out you've been messing with it, I _will_ kick your ass."

Naruto's head snapped up, eyes blazing. "I wasn't! I didn't do anything I haven't done before!"

"Except try out a jutsu the fox demon taught you. You turned into him, Naruto. A miniature, six-tailed version of him, but still." He jabbed viciously at the new lines on the seal. "Here, here, and here, these markings are all new. If you keep pulling stupid shit like this, the whole thing will rewrite itself. I shouldn't have to tell you what that means."

"Quit poking me, pervert! He's not gonna get out. I know what I'm doing!"

He ignored his student, focusing intently on the seal. He nicked his index finger and traced new lines around Naruto's navel. The lines darkened and turned red around the edges, looking like a particularly ugly burn scar; the new markings melted into Naruto's skin, locked into the seal. Naruto whimpered and squirmed, but Jiraiya's hand on his chest kept him in place. The seal flared brightly for a moment, then faded, leaving behind a faint smell of burning hair and blood.

"Promise me you won't use that jutsu ever again."

The skin around the seal was red and swollen; Naruto poked at it and sighed. "When I'm in that form, I have twelve times as much power as when I manifest the kyuubi's chakra normally, _and_ I'm invisible. _Invisible_. You'd need to, like, be a Hyuuga to even know I'm in the area, never mind where I am exactly." He sat up and met Jiraiya's eyes with a hard blue stare. "It's _cool_. And if I need it, I need it."

The pipe was out again; Jiraiya always smoked when he was thinking too hard. "Don't do it unless it's absolutely necessary, brat. And it shouldn't be- that other technique yours should do just fine." He stood and offered his hand to his student. "Nice work on that, by the way."

The blond bounded to his feet and bounced back and forth on his feet, still shirtless. "So we can go home now?" He grinned hopefully up at his teacher.

Jiraiya snorted and threw Naruto's shirt at him. "Yeah. We can go home."

Naruto's whoop of joy sent as many panicked birds flying out of the trees as his overpowered attacks had.

* * *

"So the trick is to get it moving really, really fast- it's actually a pretty low-powered technique, at least in terms of the chakra that actually goes into the blast, but you use up a lot of energy getting it to go fast enough. If it's not fast enough, you don't get the aftershock. And! And! I can make it an elemental jutsu, too! I mean, it's already kind of a wind one, but I can make it a fire or water one too, real easy." Naruto happily babbled about his new techniques while Jiraiya listened with half an ear; even taking the most direct road, they'd still been traveling for five days, and Naruto had yet to shut up.

It would be nightfall by the time they reached Konoha; as it was, they still had an hour or so to go. Jiraiya wasn't sure he could take much longer before he gagged the boy.

"Hey, hey, pervert! Do you think Sakura will go out with me when we get back?" Naruto had switched topics without skipping a beat.

It was possible that the kid's thought processes made sense to someone, somewhere, but Jiraiya doubted it. "Nope."

The blond looked crestfallen for half a moment. "Yeah, probably not. No matter how cool I really am, she's still gonna think I'm a loser." Naruto scratched the back of his head and grinned. "Hey, maybe she's going out with thick brows, now. Whadya think?"

Casting his eyes heavenward as if asking for patience, Jiraiya replied, "If she thinks _you're_ a loser, that guy doesn't stand a chance. You'll find out everything when we get there, anyway. Why don't you give my ears a rest for a while, huh?" He was still waiting for Naruto to realize they were being shadowed by someone in the forest around the path.

"Ch'. But we're going so _slowly_! We're almost there, y'know? Can't we pick up the pace a little?" The blond bounded ahead and skipped backwards up the road for a few feet. "C'mon, old man, think of the bath houses! All those naked girls just waiting to be spied on-"

Not pausing for a breath, launched a handful of kunai into the branches above the path. "Sorry, waiting to be 'researched,'" he finished to Jiraiya. Then to the treetops, "Show yourself, or the next one goes through your eye!"

A black and white clad figure dropped soundlessly onto the road before them. The hermit raised an eyebrow as the Anbu scout bowed respectfully. "Jiraiya-sama, Uzumaki-san. The path ahead is washed out; the hokage suggests that you take an alternate route." A snarling tiger mask looked up at them.

Somehow, Naruto managed to keep up a stream of nonsensical babble and remain aware of his surroundings; he'd gotten quite good at multitasking. Jiraiya felt a swell of pride at his student; the kid had picked up on their stalker soon than he'd expected. Naruto had actually learned something. The feeling of pride was quickly replaced by one of irritation when Naruto regarded the Anbu member, unimpressed. "What's the old hag talking about? Washed out? Looks fine to me." He moved as if to push past the Anbu guard, but Jiraiya grabbed him by the back of his jacket, pulling him up short.

"For once, leave the thinking to those with brains," he growled. "You gonna show us where this 'alternate route' is, or do we just go wandering around the forest on our own?"

The tiger-masked Anbu nodded and took to the tree tops with Jiraiya and Naruto at his heels. It didn't take long for Jiraiya to recognize the path they were taking; it would lead them to an Anbu lookout station in the mountains, just outside the edge of town. Orochimaru had used it to stash bodies before he left. The only reason Jiraiya knew about it (he'd never had the right temperament for the Anbu) was because the snake had tried to go to ground there; they'd fought for the last time not half a mile away.

He kept his eyes sharp as they moved closer and closer to their destination. Moving at breakneck speed, it didn't take them long to cross the distance between the main road and the mountains, and if he looked carefully- yes. There- running along one of the greater trees, the older ones that Konoha took its emblem from, was line of overgrown scar tissue. His feet had caught in the bark, chakra tearing it away with explosive force. He could track the passage of that fight in the scars on the land; they were old and faint now, but some wounds never healed completely.

Hell, some of _his_ scars from that battle still ached sometimes. His eyes traced a long, broad line in the undergrowth, barely visible but for the way the plants had grown over it. At least he'd given as good as he'd gotten, even if he probably wouldn't have survived if it weren't for the lookout station being nearby. Tsunade had been there, waiting, and she-

Was staring at him with murder in her eyes and a pair of metal plated gloves on her fists. Briefly, Jiraiya wondered what he'd done to piss her off _this_ time before teleporting himself to the safety of the tall treetops.

Naruto, unfortunately, was not so lucky. Jiraiya heard the all too familiar noise of a fist meeting a skull and winced in sympathy. Better the brat than him, however. Naruto was young enough to bounce back from Tsunade's love-taps; his own head didn't need anymore dents from her fist.

* * *

"You still didn't have to hit so _hard_, Tsunade-baba. Seriously." There was a lump forming on the back of Naruto's head. He knew it would be gone in a few minutes, but it was the principle of the thing, really. He'd been gone for three years- a less violent welcome back would have been nice.

"Do you want to see how much harder I can hit you? Stop calling me that." Tsunade crossed her arms over her chest, partly in annoyance and partly in an attempt to keep Jiraiya from trying to look down her shirt. "You're six months late. _Six months_. Where the _hell_ have you been?"

"You know exactly where we've been; I've been sending my reports. We were sidetracked by the Akatsuki in Rain Country, and I needed to gather more information. " Jiraiya wasn't bothering to hide the fact that he was staring down Tsunade's shirt.

"What you _needed_ to do was come _home_, you stupid pervert!" Tsunade's fist slammed into the rock wall behind Jiraiya's head, sending chips of stone flying. She pointed to the round table in the center of the room. "Sit."

Jiraiya and Naruto hastily complied, not wanting to chance the wrath in her eyes. She dropped a scroll on the table. "Read."

It was hard to keep from fidgeting while Jiraiya read; Naruto didn't want to be stuck in a cave with the pervert and Tsunade-baba. Sure, it was good to see the old hag, but he was hungry and he wanted to see Sakura-chan and Shikamaru and Iruka-sensei and- everyone really. He wanted to see Konoha, to make sure his village was still there, waiting for him. The way Tsunade was glaring at the scroll in Jiraiya's hands and the way she was tapping her fingers (still in those gloves, he noted with a wince) against her arms forced him to sit still, however.

Jiraiya finished reading and set the scroll in the center of the table. "How bad is it?"

Her fingers stopped tapping and clenched her shirtsleeves instead. "Bad. Orochimaru's shinobi aren't skilled, but there are a lot of them, and he's allied with Cloud and Mist. Even with Sand's help, we're back to where we were twenty years ago. I've lost nearly a third of the Anbu, and we're giving field promotions to genin just for staying alive. He has us on the defensive and we're _still_ falling back." She slumped into a chair and pinched the bridge of her nose. "We're losing. He's _toying_ with us, and we're losing."

Naruto froze as he reached for the scroll, Tsunade's words sinking in. _Losing? No. No _fucking_ way is _my_ village going to lose to that snake bastard. Not _my_ village._ He had already lost Sasuke; he wasn't going to stand for losing anything else. Red began to bleed into his eyes.

"Control yourself, Naruto. She's not finished." Jiraiya was more serious than Naruto had seen him in a very long time.

Slowly, his claws reverted back to ordinary fingernails, but the fist he slammed into the table still hit with enough force to leave a dent in the wood. "Give me a team and I'll go rip the fucker's throat out with my _teeth_, 'baa-san."

Tsunade blinked at him, and smiled. Even with her illusion, he could see wrinkles around her eyes. "Stop calling me that. Three years, and you still haven't learned any respect- I hope you learned at least a _little_ about fighting."

"Of course I have! I can kick the pervert's ass any day of the week! I-"

"He's good. Not _that_ good, but he can hold his own." Jiraiya tapped the scroll with a blunt fingernail. "He's also still my student. I don't care how desperate the situation is- if you're even thinking about giving in to Orochimaru's demands, I'll kill you myself."

The hokage narrowed her eyes at Jiraiya. "What kind of person do you think I am?"

The white haired man leaned forward, mouth drawn into a thin line. "One who would have betrayed her village for a dead dream."

She slapped him. Naruto's eyes widened in shock and sympathy; there were whole levels to this conversation that he was not privy to, and he was confused. He'd seen Jiraiya and Tsunade bicker before, but this was different. He didn't like the open hostility in Tsunade's eyes, or the quiet resignation in Jiraiya's. "Hey, wait a minute, what's going on?"

"Orochimaru lost Sasuke." Tsunade hadn't taken her eyes off Jiraiya, but Naruto couldn't care less if the two sannin were fighting. Relief hit him like a physical blow, rocking him back in his chair. Tsunade continued. "He wants _you_ in exchange for a ceasefire."

"He-what?" Naruto wasn't used to being struck speechless, but this was too surreal. "He wants _me_?" The words _Sasuke's free, Sasuke's free_ ran in circles through his head, obscuring any other rational thought.

"He wants to use you as bait. The only thing Sasuke cares about is Itachi, and right now the quickest way to get Itachi's attention is with the Kyuubi." Jiraiya's voice was very cold. "I mean it, Tsunade. You're not doing this."

"Of course I'm not!" Tsunade and Jiraiya were too busy glaring at each other to notice the way Naruto went still and silent at the mention of the fox demon. "Why do you think I brought you _here_ instead of letting you walk through the front gate?" She stood and began pacing. "I don't have many choices, but that was _never_ one of them. Naruto, give me your hitai-ate."

"What? What the fuck-" He pushed away from the table, fingers leaving deep gouges in the wood as he moved to his feet. The strangeness of the situation had him thinking in monosyllabic circles. _Mine!_ He could see red in the corners of his eyes.

"Sit _down_." He obeyed instantly, without thinking. "I'm not giving you to Orochimaru. I'm giving you a mission."

The world slowed to a saner pace. Once again, his fingers reverted to dull, human digits with a tingle. Naruto flexed them and frowned at the Hokage. "What kind of mission?"

"Undercover. A-rank, at least. The official word will be that you are a B class missing nin; since you haven't killed anyone, I can't rank you any higher than that. Be _thankful_, brat." Her warning tone made him shut his mouth before he could protest. "You are going to stay as far away from the Akatsuki and Sound as possible. Konoha will be fine; Orochimaru will give us a few months grace period. He's more interested in Sasuke than us, anyway."

"He'll know we were here. You can't honestly believe the forest isn't full of his spies." The tilt of Jiraiya's head was rebellious.

"What would you have me do?" The table creaked in protest as Tsunade brought her palms down on it. "It's a risk we had to take; if anyone asks, you came back and Naruto escaped before we could put him in lockdown."

"He'll know you're lying. He's not stupid, Tsunade, and he knows you."

Her mouth was drawn into a hard, thin line. "I don't have time to argue with you. _We're losing_. Every day we continue to fight is another dozen lives lost. I am protecting this village as I see fit; if you want to question my judgment, do it later."

She unrolled a map onto the table. "Naruto, you're going to Sand; if you follow this path through the forest, you should avoid being seen. When you get there, you will be living as a civilian- do _not_ attract attention by doing stupid things. Sand is our ally, but their hospitality will only extend so far, so please don't antagonize Gaara. The two of you will have a better chance of resisting the Akatsuki together than you would apart."

"What about Sasuke?" He didn't like the thought of leaving; he'd only just gotten back, and no matter what kind of mission Tsunade called it, it still felt like exile.

Jiraiya snorted and Tsunade frowned. "Sasuke is no longer Konoha's concern. He's made it clear where his loyalties lie."

"What's that supposed to mean? If Orochimaru is looking for him, shouldn't we do something about that?"

"I don't have the time or the resources to be worrying about a traitor, and neither do you." She stood over him and held out her hand. "So don't you _dare_ go looking for Sasuke. Now give me your hitai-ate; you're going to Sand."

Naruto refused to meet her eyes as he untied the headband. "You better take good care of it, old hag."

"I _am_ sorry about this." The wrinkles around her eyes were even more pronounced as she took his hitai-ate. "I'll hold onto it for you, until Konoha is rebuilt and ready to welcome you back with open arms."

The smile he gave her in response was similar to the grins he used to give Iruka when he failed a test. "Come on, Tsunade-baba, you don't have to hold onto it _forever_." He felt naked without the familiar strip of cloth keeping his hair out of his eyes.

"Idiot!" She reached for him suddenly, pressing a kiss to his forehead and holding him close. "Stupid brat." She let go of him as quickly as she'd grabbed him and rubbed irritably at her eyes. "There's a pack with enough supplies to last you for about a week by the door. They'll be waiting for you in Suna."

He gave her a real smile and ran a hand through his now unbound spikes of hair. "I'll be okay. And you! Pervert!" He pointed at Jiraiya, who was feigning boredom. "If you run into Orochimaru before I do, kick his ass extra hard for me!"

His teacher snorted and gave a lazy salute. "Sure. Now get out of here."

Naruto took the pack by the doorway and waved goodbye one last time. He nodded to the silent Anbu guard outside the cave and forced himself not to look back as he set out into the fading twilight.

* * *

kokonotsu biyoku kitsune kasai- nine tail fox fire (or, "Oh, the cleverness of me!" facepalm)  
tatsumaki- tornado  
kitsunenomen- mask of the fox  
suiton- water technique  
tetsu- iron  
fuukan no koumajutsu- seal of demon invocation  
tsunami- ...really _big_ wave

Ngaa.There are so many things I dislike about this...Naruto is amazingly difficult to write sometimes. The last scene bugs me horribly and I have no idea if any of the images I'm trying to communicate in the "fight" at the beginning actually work; comments/suggestions/gripes on characterization and text flow would be lovely. (How obvious is it that I have _no idea what I'm doing_?) Also? Plot? Hah, you're _funny_. (trips and falls down plothole and is never seen or heard from again)

Anyway. A thousand thanks for all the amazing reviews; any response at all from readers is wonderful, but some of you went above and beyond what most reviewers do, and I appreciate that _so_ much. Hopefully I'll continue to live up to expectations. Also: I am lazy like a very lazy thing and work very slowly unless poked repeatedly with pointy things. So a month between updates will probably be standard; possibly it will be less now that I am on break, but I am _very_ lazy and easily distracted.

So, you know, make with the reviewing and keep me on track, yo.


	3. Chapter 3

Dear eff eff dot net, I miss my asterisks. Give them back, pls. kthnxbai. ...Anyway. This chapter is a little shorter than the others, even if it took me just as long. My productivity is laughable, and I'm occasionally so formulaic it hurts. But hey, look! Sasuke! Standard warnings and disclaimers apply; random facts and self-indulgent babble located at the end. Enjoy. 

**Blindsided: Chapter 3**

  


_In which Kakashi is a brat but Jiraiya is worse, Naruto evinces a few pyromaniac tendencies, and Sasuke realizes that, maybe, he made a few bad decisions._

Tsunade and Jiraiya took the back way into the village, through the mountain. She collapsed the tunnel behind them without a word; they could take no chances during wartime, and she didn't have the manpower to waste guarding every single tunnel and rabbit hole.

They entered her office through the window; she dismissed the clone slumped over her desk and sat down. "I'm tired of this. I knew what I was getting into when you brought me back, but I'm tired of war." She stared at the paperwork on her desk, frustrated. "I'm too old for this."

"We all are; hell, the _kids_ are too old for this." Jiraiya stood behind her and carefully placed his hands on her shoulders. When she didn't pull away, he began massaging out the knots of tension.

If nothing else, that was an indication of how bad things had gotten: Tsunade never allowed Jiraiya to touch her, otherwise. She knew he was using the opportunity to stare down her shirt again, but she just didn't care. "Sometimes I want to tell Orochimaru that I'm done. We'll settle everything with a coin toss- heads, he gets the village; tails, he comes home and waits tables in drag at that seedy Anbu bar, the way you two did when we were kids."

Jiraiya snorted. "I remember that bet. My feet were killing me by the end of the night, and he got hit on way too much for comfort. That was the first and _only_ time you beat us at cards- I don't think he ever forgave you for that." He grinned and slid his hands a little further down her shoulders than necessary. "We should go back there for drinks sometime, for old time's sake."

"We should." She rolled her eyes and firmly removed his hands from her blouse by the simple expedient of knocking him into the wall with a backhand. "For old time's sake, _not_ a date. Pervert."

"Can't blame me for trying," he laughed, rubbing his jaw.

"Of course I can. I've been doing it for years, why should I stop now?" She took out Naruto's hitai-ate and traced the leaf insignia on the metal plate. She shook her head and folded it carefully, to hide the way her hands were shaking. It disappeared into the back of a drawer.

There was a knock on the door; Kakashi strode in a moment later, followed by a slightly frantic Shizune. The jounin's eyebrow lifted when he saw Jiraiya standing behind Tsunade's desk, and he allowed Shizune to shoulder him out of the way.

"Tsunade-hime, I told him you weren't to be disturbed-"

"It's alright, Shizune. You can go, I'll deal with him." Her assistant ducked out; Tsunade leaned back in her chair. She wondered how long Kakashi had been sitting in the hallway, waiting for her chakra signature to shift on the other side of the door. "Your request is denied, Kakashi. For the fourth time _today_. Go home," she said firmly, before he could speak.

"You know I would do more good out there than I have been. You can't afford to play favorites right now." Kakashi placed his hands on her desk, voice even.

He always tried to sound so reasonable; they'd been playing this game for weeks. Rolling her eyes heavenward for patience, Tsunade cracked her knuckles. "As flattering to your ego as it might be to think so, I'm not actually playing favorites. The Anbu need new members too much for me to play favorites when it comes to new recruits. But if you keep badgering me, I'll have to issue a formal statement, and that requires paperwork, and I _hate_ paperwork."

Kakashi met her glare with a pleading, one-eyed gaze. "Please?"

First he tried being reasonable, then he tried being _cute_. Kakashi was getting predictable. "_No_. You're of more use to me in your current position. I'm not going to indulge you just because you feel the childish need to prove yourself on the battlefield- and it's useless now. Orochimaru has called a cease-fire."

That actually stopped him short; of all the excuses Tsunade could have given him, Kakashi hadn't been expecting that one. "You don't really believe he'll hold to that, do you? Hokage-sama," he added, belatedly.

"She doesn't have a choice." Jiraiya crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

"Oh, so _now_ you're on my side?" She shot Jiraiya a narrow eyed glare. "I'm not putting you back in the Anbu- and if you ask me one more time, I'll put you on suspension from _all_ duties for the next three weeks. Do _not_ try my patience, Kakashi."

"You're being unreasonable, Hokage-sama," he said blandly, still leaning over the desk. "We both know there are precedents for reinstatement, particularly during wartime-"

"Only if _my_ life is being threatened, which it isn't, and only if I felt like perpetuating the stupid, elitist stereotypes that are associated with the Anbu, which I don't." She reached up and hooked two fingers under Kakashi's chin, forcing his head up at a painful angle. "But it doesn't matter in the end, because, to be perfectly blunt, I would have to be as insane as you are to allow someone with your psych profile back into the Anbu. This conversation is _over_." She used her two-fingered grip on his jaw to fling him away from her desk. "Jiraiya, do something with him." She shuffled some of the papers on her desk, refusing to meet his eye.

"Here, kid." Jiraiya pulled a lurid looking orange book out of his coat and walked to the door. "It's the new edition. Fetch!" He opened the door and threw it down the hall, where a slightly startled Anbu guard caught it.

The glare Kakashi gave Jiraiya would have caused a lesser man to spontaneously combust, "We'll talk about this later, Hokage-sama."

"No, we won't. _Get out_." Tsunade didn't even look up from her desk.

The Copy-nin gave her one last hard look and turned to the Anbu outside. "Ah, excuse me, Anbu-san? I believe that's mine." He plucked the paperback out of the tiger-masked man's hands. "Thank you. Nice catch, by the way."

"One grows accustomed to having objects thrown at one's head when one works for the Godaime." The Anbu, though polite, couldn't keep the wry humor out of his voice.

"Mm-hm." In keeping with his image, Kakashi had already opened the book and begun reading as he slouched down the hallway. "Oh, Anbu-san?"

"Yes, Kakashi-san?" The guard paused in the doorway of Tsunade's office.

"When do you get off duty?"

"In three hours, Kakashi-san."

"Ah." Kakashi's slouch became more pronounced as he paused at the end of the hall. "I'll see you later, then."

"Yes, Kakashi-san." He stepped into the office and shut the door firmly behind him. "Hokage-sama, Jiraiya-sama. You really shouldn't tease Kakashi like that."

"He brings it on himself." Jiraiya leaned against the windowsill and looked out at the village. "He's always been too serious for his own good."

The Anbu scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. "I'm not sure that's the adjective I would have used, but if you say so..."

"Stupid is the one I usually use." Tsunade said, looking irritable. "Or arrogant. You made good time coming back, Tiger. The tunnel leading to that lookout station has been closed off; issue a notice to the rest of the Anbu, and take the outer perimeter guards off rotation. You can take off early today, but tomorrow I'll need you to take Falcon, Hawk, and Deer on a perimeter before Naruto's paperwork goes through."

"With all due respect, Godaime-sama, tomorrow is my day off, and nothing short of Orochimaru standing outside the gates with an army is going to make me give it up." He pushed his mask up, revealing a scarred face and a wide grin. "But I'll take that early dismissal."

She grimaced, caught between irritation and amusement. "I can see why Sarutobi held you in such high esteem." Aside from his ability to deal with upper level academy students and the flawless state of his paperwork, Iruka was also remarkably good at getting his own way- he had a con man's smile.

From the window, Jiraiya snorted. "He raised a village of brats, you mean."

Iruka shrugged and smiled disarmingly. "Everyone's been run ragged lately. I promised my landlady I'd help her with the repairs from the last aerial raids- and anyway, Falcon doesn't like me."

"He doesn't like _anyone_," Tsunade grumbled. She shuffled some papers on her desk ineffectually. "And with good reason, but that's beside the point. Alright, you can go- stay out of trouble and keep your mouth shut about Naruto. People will start asking questions when they see Jiraiya at the bath house again."

"Of course, Hokage-sama." If he was at all insulted by her apparent low regard for his powers of discretion, he didn't show it.

Tsunade snorted. "Would it kill you to react honestly to anything, Iruka?"

"It might, at that." He sounded thoughtful. "Have a nice day, Hokage-sama." He bowed and disappeared in a puff.

"You're recruiting Anbu from the schoolteachers, but you won't let Kakashi back in the ranks?" Jiraiya frowned. "Are you sure _his_ psych profile fits?"

"Iruka isn't a teacher anymore- which is why he isn't suitable for anything _but_ the Anbu. Kakashi doesn't actually want to be reinstated- on some level, he knows it's a stupid idea. He's just miffed that Iruka was recruited, and that I won't tell him _why_. It isn't any of his business, and he hates that."

Jiraiya shook his head. "Brats, all of them."

"Brats they may be, but they're Konoha's best hope." She turned to the window again. No matter how often she looked, the view never got old. It was her village, and she would do what she had to to keep it safe. "And I have a feeling we're going to need every last one of them by the time this is over and done with."

xxx---xxx---xxx

Naruto knew Tsunade didn't want him going after Orochimaru, which was why he wasn't heading _directly_ to Sound. He was just taking a little detour on his way to Suna, one that would take him a little closer to Rice Country than necessary. _Besides_, Naruto reasoned, _what Tsunade doesn't know can't hurt her, and I'm a missing nin no matter what I do now_. He didn't really want to go to Sand; he wanted to go _home_. But as long as that wasn't an option, he wanted to be doing something. He hadn't spent three years training to sit on his ass in the desert; he was looking for a fight.

_I didn't even get to see Iruka-sensei, or Sakura-chan. I didn't get to ask if everyone was alright..._ He remembered Neji and Chouji's still bodies after that first, abortive attempt to retrieve Sasuke; the thought of that happening to them _again_, or to any of his friends, his precious people, made his vision go red at the edges.

A faint whistle distracted him from his thoughts; it was the only warning he had before a rain of needles flew through the air. Six of them connected with his shoulder, covered in an oily sheen. A louder, shrill whistle pierced the air, and three ninja wearing Sound hitai-ate appeared in the trees, surrounding him.

"Don't try to resist, Uzumaki. That nerve toxin will have you completely incapacitated in a matter of moments." The speaker was a girl with short red hair, goggles, and a mocking grin. The hand she lifted to readjust her goggles with had another set of needles clenched between its knuckles. Her teammates were similarly armed with senbon and kunai, their weapons all coated in the same unhealthy sheen.

_Shit!_ His arm was completely numb, and the numbness was spreading. Naruto gritted his teeth and slid off the branch, falling in a controlled tumble against the tree trunk. The ground was a long way away, but the underbrush swallowed him up when he hit. He just needed to buy a few moments, and then he'd be fine. Without his hands, he couldn't summon enough power to fight the poison; he had to go directly to the source. He just needed a little time...

"Hiding won't do you any good, Uzumaki!" The girl's voice rang through the trees. "In a few minutes, your whole body will shut down. Orochimaru-sama will be pleased to see you; he didn't think Konoha was going to give you up so easily. He didn't expect your Hokage to send you right into our hands!"

_Oh, sure, rub it in, why don't you._ His Hokage was going to be pissed when she found out he'd disobeyed direct orders. _Maybe next time I'll actually listen to her...maybe._ He flattened himself against the ground, trusting the undergrowth to hide him as he heard the Sound nin approaching. _Wake up, you stupid mutt, I need help!_

It was hard to concentrate with the pins and needles paralysis racing through his limbs, but the smell of blood on the air made it that much easier to drop into that quasi-meditative state that let him talk to the Kyuubi.

_What now? I was napping_.

_Lazy bastard! I can't move, give me some help here! Orochimaru's stupid flunkies poisoned us, and they want to bring us back to Sound._ He shoved an image of Orochimaru doing that creepy tongue thing at the fox, trying to convey the urgency of the situation.

_You can't do anything without my help, can you?_ The answering snarl was tinged with fire and anger and frustration. Naruto whimpered as the fury in it burned his skull. _Fine._

Fox fire ran through his veins, burning away the poison. He flexed his fingers, pulling in air in huge, hoarse gasps. "_Finally_. Kage bunshin!" Three clones popped into existence, all of them crackling with demonic chakra. The four of him left gouges in the tree trunks as they ran back up to the canopy. Fire gathered around their claws as they passed by three very startled looking Sound nin.

He managed to hit one of them with a kunai on the way up; he heard the scream and smelled blood and fear. The fox was running hot and heavy through his veins, and he saw everything through six different shades of red and the smell of blood was making him crazy. One of his clones went up in smoke, courtesy of another rain of needles.

He met up with his remaining clones above the canopy. He grabbed one by the ankle and launched it back into the fray with the help of the other, then followed it down with a handful of shuriken. The clone missile flew straight and true, a kunai clutched in each fist. The ninja he'd tagged on his way up managed to avoid a direct hit, but he was still caught on the edge of the blast when the clone exploded. The Sound nin fell off the tree, shaken loose by the explosion; Naruto listened to the drawn out doppler effect of his scream, and grinned. The Kyuubi purred.

_More_. His voice was thick with hunger and bloodlust.

_Hey, be patient. One down, two to go._ The chakra that he gathered in the palm of his hand was laced with threads of red and yellow; the grin his final clone gave him was bestial. The second Sound nin tried to stop him with more kunai, but Kyuubi's chakra blew them all away.

"Dodama Rasengan!" The Sound nin didn't even have time to scream. That was one of the things Naruto liked about his over-the-top, chakra-wasting techniques: you didn't have to clean up as much when your enemies were _vaporized_. His clone disappeared along with his opponent, and the surge of satisfaction that came from the fox was nearly obscene.

"You son of a bitch!" The girl stared at the crater in the side of the tree where her teammate had been, and clung to the side of a tree with trembling hands. "I'll make you pay for that!"

"You and what army?" Naruto shouted back. This was just a scouting party- a bunch of amateurs. They didn't belong this close to Konoha, and they were no match for him.

Another set of needles whistled past Naruto's ear, coming from behind him. He let the chakra on his feet slide a little to face this new attack- and found himself stuck, tangled in wires he could not see. The watery twilight confused his fox eyes more so than darkness would have; the shadows were confusing.

"A proper ninja needs only his skills, not an army, Naruto-kun." A polite voice spoke from behind Naruto.

Naruto knew that voice- and so did the Kyuubi, who responded with a roar of anger that made his head ring. He couldn't see the wires, but he didn't need to be able to see them to set them on _fire_. Droplets of molten metal left scorch marks on Naruto's skin as he wrenched himself free just in time to dodge even more wire-threaded senbon.

"Very good, Naruto-kun. Your control of the Kyuubi has improved since the last time we fought."

He landed on a lower branch and turned to face his new attacker, snarling. "Kabuto." A ribbon of red-gold chakra wound around his fist.

The medic-nin's glasses glinted in the fading sunlight. "Matsuba-kun, recover your teammates' bodies, if there is anything to be recovered. We've wasted enough time in this area."

"He killed Aizawa and Kei! And Orochimaru-sama ordered his capture!" Matsuba shouted at Kabuto. "You're just going to let him go?"

"Huh? You're letting me go?" Startled, Naruto let go of the chakra he was winding. If he was being honest with himself, he knew Kabuto might still be out of his league- but that didn't keep him from wanting to rip the traitor's face off.

_We could take him. Devour his flesh and drink his chakra, pour libations of blood at the foot of the trees._ There was something of the moon in Kyuubi's voice; Naruto slammed his fist into a tree trunk to distract himself. Kabuto gave him a condescending smile.

_Shut up, mutt. We took down those two lackeys, you should be satisfied._ He gave Kabuto a dirty look.

_Inferior quality. I demand something better._

_Quit complaining, asshole. I settle for cup ramen all the time._

"Orochimaru-sama sent us after Sasuke, not Naruto. His capture is not our responsibility." The glint in Kabuto's glasses became more sinister. "We don't need to waste our time here."

The girl was still trembling with rage and terror; the glare she gave Kabuto was nearly as venomous as the one she gave Naruto. "He killed my teammates-"

"You should have known better than to engage someone who was not your target, particularly not when you didn't know what he was capable of," Kabuto interrupted mildly. "We're leaving. Naruto-kun, if you don't want to be captured, you really ought to leave this part of the country. Come along, Matsuba-kun." He disappeared into the trees, heading east.

The girl spat at Naruto. "We're not finished, Uzumaki." She followed after Kabuto, leaving Naruto alone.

_Kill her!_

_Hey, hey, calm down. You wanna mess with Kabuto?_ Naruto did, actually, and he knew Kyuubi did too, but he wasn't stupid. _Just shut up and go back to sleep._

The fox growled at him, but receded from the forefront of his consciousness. Naruto snorted to himself. Sometimes the fox acted his part as a raging elemental spirit of fire; sometimes he acted like a petulant, narcoleptic child. Most of the time he was something in between the two, childish and bloodthirsty.

Naruto stared into the trees where Kabuto and his subordinate had disappeared. _I hate that guy. A lot._ He took a few deep breaths to calm himself further, then turned west, towards Wind Country. There was still a little daylight left, and he had a long way to go.

xxx---xxx---xxx

Elsewhere in the forests of Fire Country, Uchiha Sasuke was slowly bleeding to death against a tree. Even with the sharingan, he could barely make out his own hand in front of his face in the darkness; the moon wasn't up yet, and the trees cut off most of the light from the stars.

His shirt was wet, he was shivering hot and cold by turns, and his ears were ringing; he needed to stop to rest and tend to his wounds, but every moment he spent waiting was a moment Kabuto and the others spent closing in. He compromised by stuffing the tattered remains of one of his arm guards into the wound on his shoulder and tying it in place with the last of his leg wrappings. It wasn't going to stop the bleeding in the long run, but it would keep him from trailing blood for a little while.

_Can't afford to take another soldier pill, not with my reserves so depleted...Got to keep moving._ His hands were already covered in blood; he placed his palm down on the ground and whispered, "Kuchiyose no jutsu." His vision grayed out from the effort, and the seal on his neck burned, draining away even more chakra.

"Uchiha." A dry hiss sounded in his ear. Daija- one of the friendlier snakes. Most of the others wouldn't do him the courtesy of referring to him by name. "What would you have me do?"

"Locate the search teams and delay them as best you can, then find me and report." Despite his efforts, the snakes still refused to accept him as their master, even if they did respond to his summons.

"You are dying," the snake observed. "A hatchling could smell the blood on you. What shall I do if you are dead by the time I return?"

"Dispose of my body and all my possessions." It wouldn't come to that. It couldn't. The curse seal flared again, painfully, as he lost more of his reserves. "Go now."

The large snake slithered away without a sound, leaving Sasuke alone in the dark. He took in shallow breaths through his mouth, partly to take the strain off ribs that _had_ to be cracked, if not worse, and partly to utilize the only reliable sense he had left.

He could taste the remains of Daija's presence on the air, and the sharp tang of his own blood was nearly overwhelming. The breeze brought the acrid taste of unfamiliar chakra; his trackers weren't far away, now. _I was too careless when I escaped. Shouldn't have let myself get injured._ He had to keep moving.

"Fujimi no jutsu." The curse flared again, weakly, lending him the strength to complete the jutsu. The pain in his shoulder and ribs faded away, though the curse still burned. The technique was a double-edged sword; he was no longer in pain, but he wouldn't be able to tell if his wounds worsened. It was a medical jutsu he'd stolen from Kabuto, but it wasn't a _healing_ jutsu.

It was better than nothing; he took a deeper breath, testing the air for a safe path through the trees, and started moving again. He stepped carefully, knowing there wasn't much he could do to keep from leaving a trail in his current state. He could only hope that Daija managed to throw off his scent long enough for him to find a place to lie low until dawn.

He stopped when the Fujimi began to wear off; his breathing had grown distressingly _wet_, and there was only so much the pain-killing technique could do when he had a punctured lung. He was lucky the trees in this part of the forest were huge; he could take shelter in the roots, underground.

The forest soil was soft and cool beneath the overhang of two enormous roots; Sasuke buried himself in the loam as best he could and placed a weak genjutsu over his hiding place. Instead of a dull burn in the curse seal, there was a sharp pain- if he tried using any more of his chakra, he would die. He surrendered to unconsciousness gratefully, too tired to care if he was caught.

The forest had grown somewhat lighter when he finally woke up. Daija was coiled across his hidey-hole; the snake flicked its tongue in greeting when Sasuke opened his eyes.

"Well?" He managed a hoarse whisper; his skin felt slightly fevered, and parts of him were numb in ways that probably indicated something very bad. It was difficult to concentrate, difficult to breathe.

"The secondary teams are chasing each other. The medic and his team have been sufficiently distracted. Two of their members are dead." Daija's head wove back and forth, but its gaze was steady.

"How?" Unwillingly, Sasuke's eyes followed the snake's movements, his own gaze caught in the serpent's. He knew, somewhere at the edge of his mind, that he was being manipulated by his own servant. Unfortunately, he was having too much trouble determining whether or not his arm had fallen off to care.

"Uzumaki."

His eyes widened, causing his chakra to flare painfully in shock. "_Naruto?_ That makes no sense, why-"

The snake flicked its tongue at him, still weaving back and forth, and cut him off. "It is irrelevant. You are still dying. My contract lasts only until dawn; you must sleep or you will die."

"But what was Na-"

"Sleep." Daija's weaving had taken on a hypnotic quality. In his weakened state, Sasuke couldn't resist the snake's command.

His eyes rolled up in his head, Naruto's name a sigh on his lips. Daija flicked its tongue over his eyelids and lips affectionately and nudged a few chakra pathways to facilitate healing. Satisfied that its charge would survive, it settled down to wait until dawn.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Glossary of made-up stuff:  
fujimi- invincibility/insensibility to pain

I despise the more common fanon interpretations of Iruka, which is why my version of him is a little...out there. I have reasons, I promise. (No, for serious, I swear...)And, in case anyone was wondering, there will _not_ be any Kakairu in this story. Sorry, it just ain't happenin'.

Matsuba is a girl and Kabuto uses the -kun suffix when speaking to her, which is acceptable, I think; Kakashi uses -kun when talking to Sakura, and the relationship is similar. Sort of. (Mostly it's just that my Kabuto is unflaggingly polite. Smug and condescending, but polite.) (Gawd, I love Kabuto.)

Fun facts about snakes: that tongue-flicker thing they do is to taste pheromones and other scents in the air; they've got crappy eyesight, so they rely on their senses of smell and taste to get a good idea of their surroundings. They also don't have ears or eyelids, so they don't blink and "hear" by picking up vibrations in the ground through their skulls. Daija is referred to as "it" because Sasuke doesn't know its gender and it's a little impolite to ask.

Comments and reviews are like delicious candy to me; if anything wasn't clear or if my characterizations are giving off wtf vibes, or if I missed any typos, I do want to hear about it so I can improve things. Or if there's anything you liked- any line or moment that stood out as particularly amusing or appropriate- I like to hear about those, too. So, feed me, dear readers. I hunger!


	4. No clever title for you!

Augh, I suck. I suck a lot, and I apologize for sucking. This chapter should have been done a month ago but real life sucks even more than I do. This is actually kind of impressive on the part of real life, now that I think about it. 

Warnings for Naruto's potty mouth and rabid liberty taking with canon! In particular, for making shit up about Sand's political system, and the Kyuubi's seal. I figure I'll get one of three reactions- "Hey, that's kind of cool," "Dude, wtf?" and "Yo, you're a moron." I'm curious as to which reactions people have; if it's the first, awesome; if it's the second two, tell me what was so off putting about my crack theories. Also, warnings for suckiness, since this is kind of just a filler chapter.

xxx 

Blindsided: Chapter 4 _In which Kankurou really hates the concept of nepotism, Naruto has a conversation with a fox and a toad, and Sasuke discovers a new career._

xxx

Wave country had changed since the last time Sasuke had seen it. It was bigger now, and brighter; the Great Naruto Bridge had done wonders for the economy, and this was reflected in the faces and attitudes of Wave's citizens. The people were prosperous and happy; morale was up.

Naruto seemed to have that effect on a lot of things.

Sasuke squashed that thought before it could go anywhere, and pulled his cloak more snugly around his shoulders. The mid-autumn damp cut through the heavy cloth anyway, and he ducked his head to hide his shivering from the oblivious crowds on the bridge. He couldn't afford to stand out with so many people looking for him; he knew Orochimaru had contacts everywhere. He simply let the tide of the crowd pull him across the bridge.

Someone jostled into him; he bit back a hiss of pain. His wounds needed several days' worth of bed rest or some very intensive chakra work, not another week on the run. At the very least, he needed sleep in something that resembled a bed, not a hole in the ground. Finding accommodations in a place as crowded as Wave Country probably wouldn't be a problem, but he knew better than to get too comfortable. He would have to be on the move again, very soon.

Operating more on instinct than anything else, he found himself wandering across the island, through the market district to the docks. He stopped in front of a merchant ship and watched a large, shirtless man directing the crewmen as they loaded the ship with crates of salted fish.

The ship was named _Shikai no Kiryo_, and it was heading for some obscure island chain to the southeast. Buying passage on a ship would solve most of his problems; Orochimaru couldn't track him easily at sea, and he wouldn't have to worry about search teams or assassins on a ship crewed by civilians. Sasuke knew nothing about boats, but he knew immediately that he wanted to sail on this one. _Great idea. Lets abandon logic for gut instinct- because that always ends well._ The curse seal throbbed, mockingly. None of the other ships were sailing until tomorrow morning, and he didn't want to wait that long- really, he couldn't _afford_ to wait that long.

He was useless to Orochimaru as a vessel now, but he wasn't going back there. Not now, while his former master's rage was still hot, not _ever_, unless it was to see the bastard dead.

He approached the shipmaster. "Hey. Excuse me, are you the captain? How much for passage?"

"This isn't a passenger ship." The man towered over Sasuke and crossed his arms belligerently. Intersecting lines of blue ink crossed over the bulging muscles of his arms and bare chest.

"I can work."

"A shrimp like you? You ever been on a ship, shorty?"

Sasuke frowned at the comment on his height. He wasn't _that_ short, the captain was just a giant. "I'm stronger than I look. And I'm a fast learner." He'd been on a ship once, as a small child, with his family. All he really remembered from that time was the soothing feel of the boat rocking, and the way his mother had laughed when she watched the seagulls wheeling around the masts.

The man narrowed his eyes. "You're serious, huh? Alright, lets see what you can do. C'mere." Sasuke followed the shipmaster on to the deck of his ship and watched the man unwind a length of heavy rope from a winch. "You any good with knots, boy?"

Sasuke shrugged. He knew two hundred and twenty nine different ways to restrain a person using rope, and could rig three dozen different rope based traps in a lightly forested area without the use of any other materials. "I know a few."

"Well, you try this one, and maybe I'll decide you're not as useless as you look." He wound the rope into a quick bowline, then untied it. Sasuke tilted his head forward so his hair would hide the sudden glare of his sharingan while he watched the shipmaster work. "Your turn."

He'd learned to tie nooses differently for setting up traps, but with the sharingan, learning new knots was child's play. He replicated the captain's knot perfectly.

"Hmph. Not bad. Try this one." He took two lengths of rope and looped them together. The end result looked like a demented butterfly, but Sasuke copied that knot as well.

The captain surveyed the knot and nodded decisively. "I don't need any new men; _Kiryo_ gets along just fine with the crew I've got. But you don't look like you take up much space, and anybody can handle a mop. You can sail with us to Zettou Archipelago. After that, we'll see.

"But. Two things." He held up two fingers. "You don't cause trouble for my crew, and you do what you're told- I don't tolerate slackers, and if you give me any trouble, I throw you overboard. Got that?"

Sasuke nodded.

"Good. You get a hammock and two meals a day. We set sail in two hours. If you're here, you're here, if you're not, I won't wait for you." The shipmaster stuck out his hand. "Shima Ashika."

Sasuke took his hand. "Hiiro Shousei." Later, he would see about changing his face as well as his name.

Shima nodded once more and turned back to directing his crew, completely ignoring Sasuke. Good enough. He had passage on a ship, now he just had to pick up a few supplies.

He needed new weapons, preferably ones that wouldn't scream "ninja" to anyone with half a brain. Wave Country was small and had no military, but there were plenty of traveling merchants in the market. He found a vendor with a decent selection of bladed weapons of variable quality. He flipped a throwing knife end over end, testing for balance; it was a little point heavy, but he wasn't looking for hidden village quality. He caught the vendor looking at him and flipped the knife again, awkwardly, and nicked his finger when he caught it. He smiled sheepishly at the vendor.

"Ah, finest Lightning Country steel, that is! You have a good eye, young master! Perhaps you'd be interested in a set of shuriken? Finest grade, my shuriken are, used by shinobi all over the world!" The vendor was a large man with a perpetual sheen of sweat on his round face. His eyes disappeared into the folds of his forehead as he smiled at Sasuke.

Sasuke merely grunted in response, and pretended to examine the throwing stars. If they were from Lightning Country, he was a Hyuuga. He held up the throwing knife. "I'll take the set of these." A quick glance around the stall revealed little else of interest, but a straight, double-edged sword with a simple hilt caught his eye. "And that."

"Hmm, hmm, young master is certain he wants that particular blade? An odd style, it is, from far to the west. Young master would not be interested in a wakizashi, perhaps? From the Hidden Village of Cloud, with the Raikage's very own stamp of approval on it!"

He shook his head, and managed a smile. The wakizashi, like the shuriken, was a poor knock off; its blade was etched with a gaudy scene of dragons in a style that was far more suited to Hidden Mist than Hidden Cloud. Cloud was well known for the quality of its steel; Mist's biggest exports were missing nin and forgeries. "It's for my brother," he said, the lie forming easily on the tip of his tongue. "He's a collector, always looking for weird weapons. " He leaned forward, confiding. "I think he's crazy, but he loves the things, and my sister-in-law never takes her eye off him, _you_ know the type. So whenever I see something unusual when I travel, I bring it back for him. His wife _hates_ them, says they give the children ideas. _I_ think she needs to lay off a little, but it's not like my voice has any weight in that house."

The vendor's smile threatened to split his face in two. "Ah, I do understand! Young master would do well with this blade, very unusual, yes. The only one of its type in my stock, it is. You must give my best to your brother, he'll be very happy with it, I think." The merchant wrapped the weapons in heavy cloth with a deftness that belied the thickness of his fingers and named his price.

Sasuke's smile was a little wooden as he counted out the money. The idea of Itachi being a henpecked eccentric weapons collector was ludicrous enough to make him choke. He thanked the vendor and tucked his purchases under his arm, and tucked his thoughts to the back of his mind, into the same place he kept all of his memories of Konoha. It was pointless to dwell on those thoughts.

He found a tailor next and bought a new cloak and several new sets of clothes. Then he wandered through the market and picked out things as he felt he would need them; a bar of soap, a sewing kit, a few blank scrolls and some ink, and a small sack of tomatoes. He was just being practical; getting ill as a result of poor nutrition at sea would be foolish.

A short time later, he was watching the shore disappear from the deck of _Shikai no Kiryo_ with a mop and a bucket in his hands, and slightly bemused expression on his face. A huge weight was off his shoulders; this was either due to the prospect of being free for the first time in three years, or to the vast quantities of Sound weaponry and his Sound hitai-ate that had been surreptitiously tossed overboard as soon as the ship left the harbor, wrapped up in his cloak and old clothes.

His curse seal twinged, but he ignored it; he was suddenly in a better mood than he had been in a very long time, and not even the prospect of mopping floors for the rest of the voyage could keep the corners of his mouth from twitching upwards every so often.

xxx

A faint breeze slipped into the council chamber, playing with the curtains almost mockingly. Kankurou glared at the window and shifted in his seat, listening to the Councilor of Commerce drone on with half an ear. His first day back on his feet after his last mission, and he'd been trapped in the council room the whole time. He'd spent most of it trying to hide his face in the sleeves of his formal robes while pretending to pay attention. His one consolation was that _his_ seat had a pillow; he felt a little sorry for the other council members, forced to sit on bare stone. On the other hand, all of the men and women in the room seemed to delight in listening to their own voices- and, more importantly, in forcing Kankurou to listen to their voices- so he didn't feel _too_ sorry for them.

"...reporting a steady hike in water prices near Akayama and its surrounding fiefdoms. And now for the last item on the agenda." Kankurou perked up slightly while the councilor straightened a stack of papers with ponderous deliberation. After a moment, the old man cleared his throat and continued. "The Tanaka Corporation sends formal appreciation for Shinobi Team One's efforts against the desert nomads. They've agreed to cut prices on grain by fifteen percent, and are looking forward to continuing business with Hidden Sand."

The whole day suddenly looked exponentially better. _We've needed that price cut for years- and to think, all it took was the slaughter of a few hundred people_. Kankurou rubbed at his forehead beneath the heavy, itchy material of his ceremonial hitai-ate. "I motion that we send a note of thanks to Tanaka for their generosity, and give the members of Team One a bonus on their next paycheck- the standard one for upper tier A rank missions." He ignored the uncomfortable looks the councilors directed at the table; none of them dared direct their glares at _him_. "And also to send Gaara the council's official thanks for outstanding work in the field."

"Sir?" That was Baki, representing the Academy, with his arms crossed and a half-smile on his half-face.

He narrowed his eyes at his former teacher and resisted the urge to rub his face; he hated baring this much skin in public. It made him feel naked. "Do you have any concerns to express, Councilor? Otherwise, is this motion seconded?"

"Oh, the Academy seconds your motion. I was just wondering whether or not you were allowed to give yourself a raise."

"I just did, didn't I? Does anyone else have any complaints?" Kankurou hated council sessions with a violent, seething passion- the sort of hatred that turned people into warped little villainous masterminds, or mad scientists in all the good dramas. As a result, he was always little irritable by the end of the day. "No? Good."

He shrugged out of the Kazekage-in-training robes and slung them over his shoulder; he was wearing his usual black attire underneath. "Put it to a vote and adjourn yourselves, councilors. If you have any other issues, you can take them up with Temari at the next session. " He collected his puppet scrolls on his way out the door, and waved goodbye. _Freedom!_ He took the stairs to the ground level three at a time, dodging shinobi on their way up to the mission room.

Baki caught up with him outside the building, still smiling his half-smile. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you _enjoyed_ that."

He snorted, and ducked into the shade of an overhang to reapply his face paint. Once he had a few basic lines on his face, he felt much better. "If you honestly think that, you're going senile. Only idiots and politicians enjoy bureaucracy, and I," he declared, adding another stripe of purple across his forehead, "am neither."

"What does that make Gaara, then?"

"A freak," he replied easily, outlining his eyes. "Which is why he'll make a perfect Kazekage."

"The councilors would disagree with you." Baki looked thoughtful. "Not on the freak part, though."

"Politicians and idiots." Kankurou muttered. "I've heard all of their stupid excuses. 'But we've never had a Kazekage that young before! He looks so much like his father! What would our allies say?' They never ask what our _enemies_ will think when they realize we still haven't chosen a Kazekage," he spat.

Baki shook his head. "You should do that impression of Councilor Iwako in your next session. I'm sure she'd love it. They'll take insubordination from _you_."

"I'm an _actor_ and an _artist_, not anybody's fucking leader. They'll take my fist in their faces the next time they insinuate anything about Gaara." The words came out angrier than he intended them; it wasn't Baki's fault their village was full of morons. He sighed. "It's been three years since father died; we should have had a Kazekage over a year ago. Everyone knows Gaara is qualified. And he actually wants the job, the little psychopath."

Kankurou pulled off the ceremonial forehead protector and put on his own, relieved to feel the weight of plain black cotton against his skin. The official forehead plate, with the kanji for "wind" in place of the Sand emblem, was wound up in its heavy blue silk wrappings and shoved into a back pocket. He pulled on his hood. "There's no point in the council putting the three of us through this farce. He needs the position as much as the village needs him-"

"Then stop antagonizing the councilors. You have enough support where it counts from the older clans- you have Red Sand to thank for that, and your father's people. Gaara has recognition from the shinobi; it's the civilians that don't trust him, and what he did to you and your sister on your last mission certainly hasn't helped his image."

"What?" He punched the wall without thinking, chakra crackling along his knuckles. The stone splintered with a crunching sound. "What happens in our family on a mission is none of their business," he snarled.

"Medics talk, you idiot. Didn't I teach you anything?" Baki crossed his arms and scowled at his former student. "Look, I won't keep you here any longer- I just figured I should pass along some information. They held an emergency council session a few days ago; you and Temari were too injured to attend, and no one could find Gaara."

"And? What happened?" He wasn't surprised to hear that Gaara had disappeared; when his little brother didn't want to be bothered by stupid things, he was impossible to find.

"Konoha asked us to provide sanctuary for one of their shinobi, to keep him safe from Orochimaru. The council decided we owed Konoha too much to turn them down."

"Great. Who are we babysitting?"

"Uzumaki Naruto. He'll be here in a few days." Baki clapped him on the shoulder and smiled mockingly. "Have fun telling your brother."

He disappeared with a gust of wind before Kankurou could come up with a proper response. "Damnit!" he shouted at the empty street. He glared at the wall and wished he hadn't punched it already. He couldn't afford to damage his hand.

_What the hell. I didn't really want to go home, anyway._ It wasn't like he had any reason to go back; Temari would be out, doing whatever it was she did when she was out- _Probably beating the crap out of some poor Academy chuunin who doesn't have the rank to say no to a training session_, he thought sourly. And Gaara hadn't been home in days, which meant _he_ was probably somewhere in the middle of the desert, meditating. _Sulking, that is._ They were his siblings, and he loved them, but they were more than a little weird, sometimes.

Kankurou checked his face paint one last time in his hand mirror and picked a street at random, trusting that it would eventually lead to the ruins outside of town. Hidden Sand had been built on top of the remains of a city so old its inhabitants had long since been forgotten. Most of the ruins were either torn down or incorporated into new architecture, but many of the old walls and broken monoliths had been left alone just beyond the edge of town. Some people believed the old ruins were haunted; Kankurou liked them because they were usually empty, aside from the occasional guard on patrol.

The wind whistled mournfully through the stonework, but the ruins were quite otherwise. Kankurou dug a chunk of stone out of the sand and made himself comfortable on top of a lopsided bit of wall. He examined the rock in his hand, searching for shapes in the stone.

He didn't know how Gaara would react, and that was a problem. Naruto was a...delicate subject for his brother. He pulled a small triangular file out of one of his pouches and turned the stone over in his hand again. _The council just wants him to lose control again, so they can take him out of the line of succession._ He hated politics. They were just so..._stupid_. _In a few months, it won't matter._ His file rasped against the stone, and a steady stream of dust fell away from it.

Gaara had been acting strangely lately- stranger than usual, anyway, and his recent loss of control worried everyone. Naruto would either be able to help, or he would make things worse; all Kankurou could do was be ready for anything. He wasn't going to abandon his little brother again.

The lump of sandstone took shape beneath his file, a rough silhouette of a man.

xxx

Naruto's field of vision was filled with teeth. _Big_ teeth. Like, teeth as long as he was tall. _Sharp_ teeth, and lots of them.

He was rather unimpressed, all things considered.

"Ch'. Put your frickin' teeth away, I just wanna talk."

"And I just want to bite your spiky little head off and devour your soul, but we can't always get what we want, can we?" The demon's eyes glowed like hot coals, but they did nothing to illuminate the darkness of the cage. All Naruto could see were those two lamp-like eyes, and the teeth.

"_Somebody's_ in a bad mood today. What's the matter, fleas up your ass?"

The teeth crashed against the bars, sending a rumble through the entire chamber. Dust filtered down from the ceiling, and the paper wards that covered each wall of the octagon-shaped room fluttered wildly. Naruto narrowed his eyes at his demon, but didn't shift from his place in front of the cage.

"Hmph." The fox slid out of the shadows sulkily and curled up on the floor. "You're going to the desert. I have every right to be annoyed."

That wasn't the reply he'd expected. "What's wrong with the desert?"

"It's _hot_. No trees, no shadows to hide in. And I hate sand."

"Like you'll even be awake to notice, quit whining." Naruto kicked open a trapdoor set in the cracked concrete floor and pulled out a folding ladder. "Nothing's gonna attack us in the desert, not with Gaara around, so you can nap all you want."

"You would place your safety in the hands of the One-Tail's vessel? I _know_ you're stupid, but that's no excuse to put _my_ life at risk." The fox flicked his tails irritably.

He took a bucket and a brush out of the compartment and kicked the door shut. "What's wrong with Gaara? He's a little weird, sure, but he's good with his sand in a fight. And in the desert? Man, you'd have to be an _idiot_ to attack him there." He picked up a few wards from the floor at the base of a wall. "And how many times do I have to tell you to stop knocking these down?"

"When you ask for more of my power than this idiotic cage allows, you have to expect that a few things are going to get broken. You could just _leave_ them down. They'll only hinder you in the long run," Kyuubi crooned. Naruto could feel the demon's eyes boring holes in his back while he repaired the wards on the walls.

"Yeah, I bet you say that to all the girls. The _pervert_ has better pickup lines than that. And he'll _kill_ me if I don't fix things every time you knock stuff down." He stuck the pieces of paper back on the wall and slathered them with glue. The entire room was just an elaborate visualization, a sort of self-perpetuating genjutsu built into the seal to keep it maintained. Jiraiya had gone on at length on the ingenuity of the Fourth's sealing technique; Naruto had been preoccupied with trying out a new jutsu on the local wildlife at the time, but he had to admit the whole setup _was_ pretty cool. The room had changed over the years, reshaping itself as Naruto gained more control over it. He'd have to think up some paint one of these days, and redecorate, just to piss off Kyuubi. "You didn't answer my question about Gaara. I don't want you causing any trouble."

"I do not care even the slightest bit about any of your filthy little human friends." There was a definite sulky note to the fox's growl.

Naruto bit his thumb and drew a line of blood down the center of the ward, reactivating it. He dragged the ladder to the next wall, and another set of fallen seals. "His demon, then. That badger thing."

Kyuubi snapped at the bars and snorted. "Not worth my time. Shukaku of the Sands is a braggart and an idiot with a poor sense of humor and no intuition whatsoever for when a joke has gone stale."

"Huh?" Naruto's brush slipped, spattering him with glue. He cursed and brushed ineffectually at his jacket. Kyuubi chuckled. "Maybe you just don't have any sense of humor, ever think of that? Stupid fox..."

"Oh, no," he purred. "My jokes are _always_ funny."

Naruto shook his head. "Freak."

"Just remember where you'd be without me, small pest."

Sometimes, when his demon grinned like that, Naruto had to remind himself that animals only showed their teeth when frightened- or preparing to attack. He turned back to his glue and ignored the way Kyuubi kept licking his lips.

He finished the repairs on three more walls in silence before the ceiling started rippling. Naruto shot the demon one last glare, and let himself be pulled back to consciousness.

His eyes were closed, and something cold and sticky was poking his face. Naruto snorted and cracked open his eyes. Gamakichi blinked back at him, surrounded by a backdrop of incredibly tall grass. "Gah! Get off my face, you stupid frog!" He grabbed the toad spirit and poked him in the belly. "What's with the poking, huh? How do you like it?"

"Hey! You told me to wake you up! It's time you got back on the road, boss." Gamakichi squirmed in Naruto's grasp, but he held the toad firmly and continued poking. "Come on, boss, quit it! That tickles!"

"Serves you right, poking me in the face when you're all slimy." Naruto made a face at the toad, and let him go. "Thanks for the heads up."

The little toad's throat puffed up importantly. "No prob, boss! You should reach Hidden Sand in another day or so, just don't do anything stupid like getting lost in the desert. I ain't gonna come and bail you out if you get into trouble out there, I'd dry up in a minute flat!"

"Yeah, alright- hey, who're you calling stupid! I have a great sense of direction!" Naruto lunged at Gamakichi, but the spirit hopped away. "Get back here! I'll show you _flat_, you little jerk!"

"See ya, boss!" He disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving Naruto with a grin on his face.

Naruto stretched his arms above his head and felt his spine pop into place. _Nothing like an argument to start the day off right!_ It was closer to early evening now, but Naruto didn't want to travel during the hottest part of the day any more than he had to, even this late in the year. The grasslands on the border of Wind Country were just as bad as the deserts at high noon.

He rummaged through his pack for some breakfast and turned west again, towards Hidden Sand.

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Shikai no Kiryo- Traveler of the seven seas (or, I suck at naming boats.)  
Zettou- lonely island 

Hey, look! Another chapter in which nothing happens! And not only is it a month late andabout a thousand words too short, it's sloppily edited! Excitement! ...In other news, I hate writing Sasuke. That's really all I have to say about this chapter.

A thousand thanks to everyone who reviewed, and all the other readers who have made it this far; I -heart- you guys to itty bitty pieces. And with any luck, there will be actual _content_ in the next chapter (gasp, shock). Is Sasuke really free from Orochimaru? Will Naruto get horribly lost in the desert? Does Gaara actually show up, or do people just talk about him? Meanwhile, back in Konoha, has Iruka finally snapped and strangled Kakashi? Has Tsunade? And what _have_ the Akatsuki been up to lately? Tune in to chapter five to find the answer to at least one of these questions- and if you're lucky, I may even answer _two_ of them!

Feed my inspiration and dying self esteem with reviews, whut. (Does anybody even read author's notes anymore? I'm curious...) Tell me how badly I butchered Sasuke, or how idiotic and draconic Sand's political system is, or how much you love me (hint, hint). Maybe I'll get the next chapter out before October, wouldn't that be exciting? In the meantime, I'll be working on my costume for Otakon- I will be the shortest Jiraiya there, I think. Feel free to pat me on the head if you see me, I don't bite- I may squeak very loudly, but I promise I won't bite.


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